Claudio Abbado's live DGG recording of Debussy and Mahler with the extraordinary virtuosos of his Lucerne Festival Orchestra heads my list. Both pieces demonstrate the Italian maestro's stunningly beautiful orchestra textures of the Debussy convey luminosity of a Turner seascape; the Mahler is the most intensely musical account since Bruno Walter's very different but similarly compelling version.

. . . impressive, though it's the powerful reading of Debussy's seascape that wins over the gigantic Mahler epic.

Record Review /
Independent (London) / 06. November 2004

. . . there was a clear winner in my 'standard repertoire' allocation: a magical, ultra-lucid "La mer" from Claudio Abbado and friends.

Record Review /
David Gutman,
Gramophone (London) / 01. December 2004

The sound this orchestra produces is marvellous: highlights include a ravishing woodwind section, but also fabulously vibrant cellos and basses. In the Mahler, the choral contribution of the Orfeón Donostiarra is remarkable too, the low notes of the basses coming through with a resonance I have heard in few other performances . . . he brings Mahler's world wonderfully to life here with a vibrancy that I haven't heard in his earlier recordings of this symphony: in common with his other recent Mahler performances there is greater stature, sharper sense of drama and long-term trajectory, and deep insight. So it is the symphonic strength of the music that reigns supreme here -- and in those terms this new version is a triumph . . . superlative playing, fine singing, and above all conducting of new-found eloquence and poetry from Abbado . . . this is a wonderful, vivid, poetic performance to which I shall return very often. The last movement grows to a climax of truly awe-inspiring splendour, and the well-behaved Lucerne Festival audience wait just long enough after the last timpani thwack before going berserk -- and so they should. The recorded sound for the Mahler is very good, and the same is true in most of "La mer" . . . This is an enormously impressive release in many ways, but the most exciting is surely the prospect of Claudio Abbado embarking on a brilliantly fruitful Indian summer after his emergence from the dark tunnel of grave illness. That is cause for rejoicing.

Record Review /
Nigel Simeone,
International Record Review (London) / 01. December 2004

Riveting performances recorded live . . . Abbado's Debussy has ravishing transparency; his Mahler is roof-raising.

Record Review /
The Sunday Times (London) / 12. December 2004

Exhilarating intensity . . . There is tension and urgency in a performance that unfolds without a lapse as it sweeps to the thrilling choral finale.

Abbado joins a quartet of Italian conductors . . . none of these has found so much detail in the score, or even encompassed such a wealth of expression.

Record Review /
Hi-Fi News (London) / 01. February 2005

The debut recording from an orchestra whose players are the best of the best . . . The result is everything it should be and more. The Debussy is a fine recording, but the Mahler is without doubt one of the greatest versions yet of this much-recorded work. 5 Stars.

Record Review /
Hi-Fi Choice (London) / 01. February 2005

This is an interpretation so in love with its largesse, from the pulled-about glimpse of heaven minutes into the first movement onward, that only the seductive sonics typical of MTT's San Francisco Mahler cycle could carry it off. The end result is dressed to impress, and that's not enough when Abbado so evidently lives and feels every bar of the score . . . Abbado operates on levels of musicality that even his previous recordings could only dream about.

Record Review /
David Nice,
BBC Music Magazine (London) / 01. February 2005

The sound of the Debussy is quite vivid -- immediate and natural . . . quite exciting. Abbado's "De l'aube" is . . . precise, taken at a moderate tempo that allows for maximum clarity . . . The "Jeux" is invested with wit and playfulness -- and rhythmic energy -- as well as the precision that typified the first piece. In the "Dialogue", it is the energy . . . as well as the precision and excellence of the playing that is foremost. This is idiomatic Debussy that allows one to focus on the brilliance of the orchestration: this paean to the sea should appeal even to the land-locked listener. The Mahler symphony sounds terrific, too -- the bass is deep and well defined, while there is a clarity and depth to the soundstage that greatly enhances Abbado's dramatic conception of the piece. The engineers have provided another vivid experience, which places the listener very close to the action without sounding in the least bit cramped or artificial . . . the lyrical and melodic are given high priority, while Mahler's dramatic contrast is fully in evidence . . . Anna Larsson sings a very sensitively phrased "Urlicht", equal parts nobility and melancholy.

As for a gift received, Debussy's "La mer" as a prelude to Mahler's Second Symphony under Claudio Abbado sheds startling new light on this compelling masterpiece. The playing of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra radiates.

Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival OrchestraA memoir of the summer of 2003

Expectations ran high in the concert hall of Lucerne's Cultural and Congress Centre on the evening of 14 August 2003. Here, finally, was the Lucerne Festival Orchestra that had been talked about so often during the previous weeks and days. Here, too, was Claudio Abbado, who had first appeared at the Lucerne International Music Festival - since 2001 known simply as the Lucerne Festival - in August 1966 and who had gone on to make musical history. There is no doubt that this combination of orchestra and conductor lent the event its special atmosphere. The concentration on the platform was as exceptional as that in the audience - and at the end the tension erupted in a frenzy of applause unlike anything seen or heard in the hall since it had opened in the summer of 1998.
The evening ended with Debussy's La mer. Yes, said the conductor a few days after the concert, they had really flown. Throughout the performance listeners felt that never before had they heard such detail, never before had the work been played with such infectious verve. English horn and cello blended together with wonderful inwardness, while flute and oboe sometimes seemed to have become a single instrument. But it was not only on the level of tone colour that the orchestra gave the impression of a single body of sound: its musical gestures and movements created the same sensation. When had the opening movement's climactic outbursts, the joy of the middle movement and the ecstasy of the finale been more vividly felt? No one who was present will ever forget the performance.
Much the same emotions were in evidence at the Lucerne Festival Orchestra's second concert, a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony. With its overt emotionalism and magnificent monomania, this work by a self-confident and ambitious thirty-year-old is not without its problems, but in the present performance everything seemed convincingly well proportioned, building in a single unbroken line from the savage onslaught of the cellos and basses in the symphony's opening bars to the powerful apotheosis of the final movement. Abbado succeeded in bringing out the beauties of the score, while keeping its element of kitsch under firm control, allowing the music to tell its story and at the same time ensuring that the discursiveness of the narrative was held in check with an unforgettable blend of vitality and precision. Above all, the orchestra's ability to envelop the listener set standards that others will strive in vain to surpass, an achievement helped in no small way by the design of Jean Nouvel's concert hall and by the crystal-clear translucency of Russell Johnson's acoustics.

An orchestra of soloists
This was all possible because the Lucerne Festival Orchestra represents a highly fruitful synthesis of two related ideas. One is the idea of an élite orchestra. On 25 August 1938, fifty-five years before the Lucerne Festival Orchestra first appeared in public, a concert was given outside Wagner's villa at Tribschen on Lake Lucerne, when Toscanini conducted an orchestra specially convened for the purpose. The bulk of its players came from the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which its founder, the conductor Ernest Ansermet, had wanted to see used during the summer months. There were also sectional leaders from other Swiss symphony orchestras and a number of local chamber groups. The front desks of the strings were occupied by the violinist Adolf Busch and his string quartet. This élite orchestra formed the nucleus of the Swiss Festival Orchestra that was established in 1943 and which remained the Lucerne Festival's resident orchestra until 1993.
The Lucerne Festival Orchestra represents a continuation of this tradition. Each summer the world's leading orchestras meet on the shores of Lake Lucerne. If the festival wants to call on its own orchestra for special projects, it needs to have a world-class body of players at its disposal. In short, it is an élite orchestra as before, except that it is no longer made up exclusively of Swiss musicians. Rather, it draws on the finest players, from wherever they happen to come. As an institution it is intended to be a permanent affair, while at the same time being continuously reconstituted. This, then, was the starting point for Claudio Abbado and the festival's director, Michael Haefliger. The core of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra is provided by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, itself an élite body of players made up of all those former members of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra who are now too old to play in this last-named ensemble and who have distinguished themselves by their particular achievements within this group of highly gifted individuals.
During the summer of 2003 the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was joined by a number of chamber ensembles, just as had been the case with Toscanini's élite orchestra: these included the Hagen Quartet (only its viola player Veronika Hagen was missing) and the clarinettist Sabine Meyer's Wind Ensemble. But the orchestra also boasted a whole series of well-known soloists and section leaders of major orchestras, including the violinist Kolja Blacher, the leader of the Berlin Philharmonic, who performed the same function in Lausanne; Natalia Gutman as principal cellist; the trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and the recorder player Michala Petri; the double bass player Alois Posch from the Vienna Philharmonic; and several members of the Berlin Philharmonic. The list of names read like a veritable who's who of music, while members of the audience who glanced into the orchestra were sure to recognize one familiar face after another.

Music-making in a spirit of friendship
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra's decisive involvement in the project is bound up with the second idea on which the Lucerne Festival Orchestra is based, an idea that is rooted in turn in Claudio Abbado's long years of experience with youth orchestras. At an early date in his career - at Parma in 1962/3 - Abbado taught chamber music to comparatively large ensembles. His main aim was to encourage the young musicians to listen to each other, as this can have a decisive impact on their ensemble playing. Later Abbado wanted to bring this approach to bear on symphony orchestras, but his aims proved unrealizable within the framework of the fixed working practices and structures of existing orchestras, and so he set up the European Community Youth Orchestra in 1978. From this the Chamber Orchestra of Europe emerged in 1981. Five years later came the idea of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, which was additionally intended to be open to players from outside the European Union. In turn this produced the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in 1997.
Behind these activities lies Claudio Abbado's conviction that an orchestra is neither a company of soldiers commanded by a colonel nor a group of employees taking its orders from some super-manager. True, the conductor beats time and decides on the tempo and other details. But far more important for Abbado - and in this he has decisively changed the professional image of the conductor - is that he regards orchestral music-making as a form of chamber music on a larger scale (hence the need for a conductor). Orchestral players are not subordinates but partners, and their work together proceeds on the basis of friendship, not on the strength of commands. As a result, much of the preparatory work is left to the players themselves. In the case of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the various sections worked together for two weeks under the guidance of their section leaders, and it was only in the final phase that the orchestra came together to rehearse with Abbado. This also explains why the two programmes on which the orchestra worked at the 2003 Lucerne Festival were complemented by a wide range of chamber music events.
If many concert- and opera-goers see orchestral musicians as employees with plenty of free time and the mentality of trades union members, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra's appearances at the 2003 festival were able to correct this view. Here the players were participants, rather than subordinates, producing the best possible results. This could be seen in the faces of the players, who exuded a degree of good spirits rarely found on these occasions. And it was no less clear from the enthusiasm of their conductor. Although Abbado was seventy and only recently recovered from a serious illness, he gave his all to the orchestra on a physical and emotional level. The mental energy that he is uniquely able to mobilize when the actual concert comes round, the intensity of his emotional response to the music and his ability to listen to the players and shape the music in the here and now - all this he radiated without holding back in the slightest. As a result listeners were able to hear an orchestra quite literally surpassing itself.
Peter Hagmann
(Translation: Stewart Spencer)